The city of Port Orchard dedicated two new Blink electric vehicle charging stations Monday on Fredrick Street along the downtown waterfront.
The stations are the first of their kind in the area, but local leaders suggested at the dedication that they won’t be the last.
“This is truly a revolution,” said Charlotte Garrido, South Kitsap’s county commissioner. “Port Orchard, you are a leader.”
She wasn’t alone in saying that it was forward-thinking of Port Orchard to invest about $12,000 from the city’s general fund in the charging stations.
Dan O’Shea, the Washington sales manager of the company that installed the stations, said that now is an especially affordable time to invest in a recharging station, because of deals his project is offering.
His company, ECOtality, is a $230 million project funded partly by a $114.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and partly by the private sector.
Through the project, cities can get a free Blink charging station and up to $2,250 towards the station’s installation.
And while there aren’t many all-electric vehicles on the road yet, they’re the way of the future, said several leaders at the meeting.
Mayor Lary Coppola suggested that electric vehicles would cause a “paradigm shift” in transportation, similar to the change from horse-drawn carriages to cars.
There are 22 Nissan Leafs in Kitsap County and 654 in Washington, according to the state’s Department of Transportation. There are 29 Chevrolet Volts in the state, but none registered in Kitsap County.
There are 1,200 Toyota Prius hybrids in the county. Older models of the Prius aren’t compatible with the new charging stations, but models made after 2010 are.
And the charging stations may be used for vehicles other than cars.
“We would like to see electric bikes and mopeds” driving along the waterfront, said Patty Graf-Hoke, executive director of the Kitsap Peninsula Visitor and Convention Bureau.
Graf-Hoke hopes to eventually see recharging stations “all over the Kitsap Peninsula.”
For now, they could be used to draw tourists to visit the area, she said.
Those driving an electric car are limited on potential destinations, because they need to recharge the vehicle’s batteries after traveling a certain distance, and charging stations aren’t located in every city yet.
